Bizarre Systems
Project: Polytopia

Monica Anderson explains.

Reductionism is an amazingly powerful strategy for leveraging the work of scientists and for disseminating the results in the form of re-usable models of structure and causality. But for some of the "remaining hard problem domains" such as Life (biology, psychology, ecology, etc), the World (world modeling, economies, sociology), Intelligence (understanding the brain, intelligence, and creating Artificial General Intelligences - AGI) and the problem of determining the semantics of language (e.g. text) Reductionism has failed. I claim that reductionist models cannot be created in these domains (which have been named "Bizarre Domains") and that we must use Model Free (Holistic) Methods for these domains. This has important implications for AGI research strategies.

"AI is the last holdout of pure reductionism, if you will."

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence. In later lectures she uses AN: Artificial iNtuition.

Slow down and enjoy the presentation. 31:22

Sun, Sep 5, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: future, collective intelligence, collective intelligence, polytopia, science, video, analysis, Systems Science, artificial intuition
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The Social Currency: Time
Project: Polytopia

"If anybody wants to access your time or knowledge or influence, they would have to pay for it with their own."

Dan Robles

Image credit: Bizarro Capitalism by Dan Robles

"Thousands of social currencies are emerging as people lose confidence in the ability of the dollar to store value. At the end of the day, a currency is a social agreement. People need to agree that whatever they use for the storage and exchange of value accurately represents their productivity – otherwise they will not work for it.

Of course this is much easier said than done. Alternate currency advocates continue to stumble across substantial structural issues defining their currency; It must be scarce, it must be difficult to forge, debase, or counterfeit and it must be accepted by everyone.

The only thing that fits all of those criteria is ‘Time’. "

More, much more ... The Ingenesist Project .

Sun, Aug 29, 2010  Permanent link

Sent to project: Polytopia

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Reasoning: logical. Understanding: intuitive
Project: Polytopia

Models vs. Patterns by Monica Anderson

Grasping how things are. Why understanding comes first, before reasoning, and what role pattern matching plays.

The most common question in the Q&A after my Model Free Methods talk was "Aren't those Holistic Patterns really a kind of Models?" In order to clarify this issue I created this presentation. I also talk about Reductionist and Holistic approaches to aiming a cannon.

See also the whitepaper by Monica Anderson A Radical Approach to Understanding Text (pdf download).

Sun, Aug 22, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: future, data, polytopia, learning, artificial intuition
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Improvement of the world: highly contextual
Project: Polytopia

Hans Rosling, genius of data visualization at Gapminder leads us to grasp surprising big data and aim for adequate context. One of his key messages for me: what we can do to effectively help people in one place and condition would not necessarily work well elsewhere. That is why I feel complex adaptive people networks have a growing role in improving the world.
Image credit: Gapminder World





Video, Hans Rosling: No more boring data 20 minutes TED talk - 2006

Sun, Aug 15, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: future, data, collective intelligence, science, video, analysis, statistics, teaching, learning
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Emergent on a roll
Project: Polytopia

Kevin Kelly, author, Out of Control

Chapter 2: HIVE MIND - The collective intelligence of a mob

In a darkened Las Vegas conference room, a cheering audience waves cardboard wands in the air. Each wand is red on one side, green on the other. Far in back of the huge auditorium, a camera scans the frantic attendees. The video camera links the color spots of the wands to a nest of computers set up by graphics wizard Loren Carpenter. Carpenter's custom software locates each red and each green wand in the auditorium. Tonight there are just shy of 5,000 wandwavers. The computer displays the precise location of each wand (and its color) onto an immense, detailed video map of the auditorium hung on the front stage, which all can see. More importantly, the computer counts the total red or green wands and uses that value to control software. As the audience wave the wands, the display screen shows a sea of lights dancing crazily in the dark, like a candlelight parade gone punk. The viewers see themselves on the map; they are either a red or green pixel. By flipping their own wands, they can change the color of their projected pixels instantly.

Loren Carpenter boots up the ancient video game of Pong onto the immense screen. Pong was the first commercial video game to reach pop consciousness. It's a minimalist arrangement: a white dot bounces inside a square; two movable rectangles on each side act as virtual paddles. In short, electronic ping-pong. In this version, displaying the red side of your wand moves the paddle up. Green moves it down. More precisely, the Pong paddle moves as the average number of red wands in the auditorium increases or decreases. Your wand is just one vote.

Carpenter doesn't need to explain very much. Every attendee at this 1991 conference of computer graphic experts was probably once hooked on Pong. His amplified voice booms in the hall, "Okay guys. Folks on the left side of the auditorium control the left paddle. Folks on the right side control the right paddle. If you think you are on the left, then you really are. Okay? Go!"

The audience roars in delight. Without a moment's hesitation, 5,000 people are playing a reasonably good game of Pong. Each move of the paddle is the average of several thousand players' intentions. The sensation is unnerving. The paddle usually does what you intend, but not always. When it doesn't, you find yourself spending as much attention trying to anticipate the paddle as the incoming ball. One is definitely aware of another intelligence online: it's this hollering mob.

The group mind plays Pong so well that Carpenter decides to up the ante. Without warning the ball bounces faster. The participants squeal in unison. In a second or two, the mob has adjusted to the quicker pace and is playing better than before. Carpenter speeds up the game further; the mob learns instantly.

"Let's try something else," Carpenter suggests. A map of seats in the auditorium appears on the screen. He draws a wide circle in white around the center. "Can you make a green '5' in the circle?" he asks the audience. The audience stares at the rows of red pixels. The game is similar to that of holding a placard up in a stadium to make a picture, but now there are no preset orders, just a virtual mirror. Almost immediately wiggles of green pixels appear and grow haphazardly, as those who think their seat is in the path of the "5" flip their wands to green. A vague figure is materializing. The audience collectively begins to discern a "5" in the noise. Once discerned, the "5" quickly precipitates out into stark clarity. The wand-wavers on the fuzzy edge of the figure decide what side they "should" be on, and the emerging "5" sharpens up. The number assembles itself.

"Now make a four!" the voice booms. Within moments a "4" emerges. "Three." And in a blink a "3" appears. Then in rapid succession, "Two... One...Zero." The emergent thing is on a roll.

Source: Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, Chapter 2: HIVE MIND - The collective intelligence of a mob

Photo by Joi Ito

Mon, Aug 9, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, bizarre problems, inspired
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Understanding rather than Reasoning
Project: Polytopia

A New Direction In AI Research

Monica Anderson proposes adding a new target to ongoing AI research efforts: We need to focus more of our attention on Understanding as opposed to Reasoning. Understanding requires using Model Free Methods. As a bonus towards the end, Ms. Anderson also speculates about the so-called AI singularity and discusses whether SkyNet like scenarios, where computers take over the world, are plausible.

Mechanical manipulation of formulas, even in the most strictly logical contexts require intuition-based guidance in order to progress towards a goal, such as simplification.
...
Intuition is an invisible but non-mystical process....

Intuition is fallible, that is why it is not a good basis to use in science...

Intuition is the art of guessing wisely, based on a lifetime of gathered experience, stored as patterns...

Monica Anderson

Does it make sense to you?

Why does the mind enjoy #simplicity? Because once you get it (conceptual understanding), things do get simple.

CoCreatr

Sun, Jun 27, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, polytopia, science, video, model-free method, advance
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Science Beyond Reductionism
Project: Polytopia

Monica Anderson discusses the ongoing paradigm shift - the "Holistic Shift" - which started in the life sciences and is spreading to the remaining disciplines.

Model Free Methods (also known as Holistic Methods) are an increasingly common approach used on "the remaining hard problems", including problems in the domain of "AI" - Problems that require intelligence. She illustrates this using a Model Free approach to the NetFlix Challenge.

The ideas we are talking about are that the brain works using Intuition and Prediction, not Logic; that Intelligence is 99% Intuition; that Intuition based methods allow short-term prediction in Bizarre problem domains; that they also allow Discovery of Semantics from mere observations of chains of events such as those in spatiotemporal sequences; that artificial systems based on these ideas can learn and understand languages and partially understand the world using only text as input

My rough estimate is that over a million person-years has been spent on AI and closely related topics worldwide

Monica Anderson

Mon, Jun 14, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: Science, video, collective intelligence, advance, bizarre problems, artificial intuition
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Vision for Lady Justice
Project: Polytopia

Brian Robertson wrote the Rule of Individual Action:

No matter how clearly we’ve defined the rules, policies, and processes,
we will occasionally see a need for action which doesn’t fit within the defined system. In most organizations we're tempted to hide such Individual Action for fear of blame, but doing so costs the organization a critical learning opportunity.

... the rule of Individual Action tells you to do exactly what people will do anyway: Consider the information available, including the existing rules, and take whatever action you believe makes the most sense using the best judgment available to you. However, when that action falls outside or against existing governance, the rule of Individual Action adds two further steps you must also be prepared to take:

Call out your Individual Action, and be prepared to “restore the balance” from any harm or injustice caused (this represents a shift to a restorative justice system rather than a punitive one); and

If the action becomes a pattern, bring it up at a governance meeting so that the circle can learn and adapt – thus Individual Action triggers organizational learning.

Operating outside the rules or even breaking the rules is thus within the rules, as long as you've genuinely acted using your best judgment, for the sake of the organization, and followed these two corollary steps afterwards. This isn't suggesting anyone should break the rules any more than already happens, it's rather recognizing the reality that it
does happen and working with it.

This is one of the concepts so workable (like this big idea) that I find myself wondering why no one has proposed that before. Maybe they have, but it had not found me. Thanks to @mgusek555 for sharing the link. Thanks @technoshaman for the research proposal he added to a prior post on this blog.

Ethics and Compliance

To me, this Rule of Individual Action belongs into the toolkit of Ethics and Compliance professionals. And the legal profession, too. Here is why:

It is future-oriented as much as its counterpart is looking to the past. Like two sides of Justitia's scales, both the rear-view mirror and the windshield are useful if you are on your way forward. We all know which is safer to devote most of our attention to.

In essence, the precedent seems to be justified by following logic: We are convinced as a society we survive better if we acknowledge the work and wisdom that led to a well-researched, well-documented decision, presumably just to the best of our knowledge at the time. This is efficient and effective because it keeps us from having to repeat history once again. We can identify similarities and differences, read up about it and leapfrog to the conclusion. Time saved, case closed, let's move on. A safe path to guide us in future.

Until it isn't any more.　

Ethics and Compliance need a Vision

Present problem is, invitations or cases to decide whether to rely on precedent or review the rules are coming at us not in a few year's time as it used to be. Changes in rules and context may fly at us every few days, and may be coming up in hours. Despite powerful text storage and search engines, the justification for decision-making must fit into ever smaller windows of opportunity.

In an exponential future, the rules and language of the past do not hold much water any more. Language is a bizzarre problem requiring new scientific approaches, model-free being one of them (explained in this video).

Meaning changes with context. With our minds we can process it, to a degree. As a community, we can talk it over, much of meeting time used up to agree on what we really mean and build mutual understanding.

Emerge The Conversation

Pictures and video conversation (as in Junto) would help, because they enable learning by watching talk or actions. Especially video helps to confer tacit knowledge, essential to grow collective understanding. Culture, actually. How about working on a more rigorous use of language - augmented language, maybe, so as to not go the legalese way? Balanced with modern media to enable ease of understanding and, naturally, encompassing individual action, how about that?

Image credit: pacmikey on flickr

Sat, Jun 12, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: Future, collective intelligence, justice
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Things are not what they seem. Nor are they otherwise.

cloudhead
by headmine.net

truth

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.“
Could a 21st century knowmad take that oath?
Truth is no longer carved in stone, or written in ink
it flickers and flashes at the speed of light.
“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.”
- McLuhan

Our courtrooms and governments, schools and churches
all grew out of the truth of clocks and tidy rows of text
the truth of assembly lines
and butterflies pinned down in glass cases.

But a new kind of truth is emerging from the logic of the net
and it defies all logic.
This is the truth of ecology and relationship
the truth of hip hop and electricity
and bodies dancing.
In this web of instant information, truth is no longer a chain of facts but a collision of contradictions and co-incidences.

Reason and logic have given way to image and emotion
and truth has once again begun to unravel like a Zen poem.

Things are not what they seem.
Nor are they otherwise.
- Lankavatara Sutra

To which I bow in reverence, yet feel inclined to add:

I acknowledge truth is relative and context matters.
When you have evidence and facts - the victim and the blood,
the suspect in fear, what will we hear?
"The truth"? The suspect's truth? Our prejudice? Or something in between?

Truth to me is akin to reality. In the end, based on agreement.

Would you agree?


Image: Monad to infinity, by CoCreatr, (i) inspired by Venessa and by Catherine Beyer

Mon, Jun 7, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: art, inspired, advance

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Science can be knowmad?

At any given time in history, science was only so far advanced and sometimes violently denied the findings of advanced thinkers - only to come back later to the exact same point - to prove now the truth of what was previously denied.

B. Nurnberger (1996)

An excerpt

Future Shock Levels
©1999 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.
Written 06/10/99.
Revised 05/14/01.

Summary:
A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without exhibiting future shock. Shock Level Zero or SL0, for example, is modern technology and the modern-day world, SL1 is virtual reality or an ecommerce-based economy, SL2 is interstellar travel, medical immortality or genetic engineering, SL3 is nanotech or human-equivalent AI, and SL4 is the Singularity.

The classification is useful because it helps measure what your audience is ready for; for example, going two Shock Levels higher will cause people to be shocked, but being seriously frightened takes three Shock Levels. Obviously this is just a loose rule of thumb! Also, I find that I often want to refer to groups by shock level; for example, "This argument works best between SL1 and SL2". (This does not mean that people with different Shock Levels are necessarily divided into opposing social factions. It's not an "Us and Them" thing.)

• SL0: The legendary average person is comfortable with modern technology - not so much the frontiers of modern technology, but the technology used in everyday life. Most people, TV anchors, journalists, politicians.


• SL1: Virtual reality, living to be a hundred, "The Road Ahead", "To Renew America", "Future Shock", the frontiers of modern technology as seen by Wired magazine. Scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers, technophiles.


• SL2: Medical immortality, interplanetary exploration, major genetic engineering, and new ("alien") cultures. The average SF fan.


• SL3: Nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, minor intelligence enhancement, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration. Extropians and transhumanists.


• SL4: The Singularity, Jupiter Brains, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity, Alpha-Point computing, Apotheosis, the total evaporation of "life as we know it." Singularitarians and not much else.

If there's a Shock Level Five, I'm not sure I want to know about it!


More...

Thu, Apr 29, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: science, advance, shock level

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